WeWork, now known as The We Company, announced this morning the acquisition of a rival co-working business, Spacious. The three-year-old, New York-based startup turns restaurants that sit empty during the day into co-working spaces, and is one of several niche co-working startups — like Convene, Knotel, Industrious, The Yard, The Wing and Alley, for example.
Spacious was co-founded in 2016 by CEO Preston Pesek, whose background is in commercial real estate. The company’s goal was to take advantage of under-utilized urban spaces, including abandoned retail stores and empty restaurants, to serve the co-working crowd. The company has since converted dozens of restaurants in New York and San Francisco into weekday work spaces.
Customers can access the work spaces with anything from a $20 day pass all the way up to a $129 per month annual membership.
The restaurants benefit from the arrangement by gaining a new form of revenue in what’s an otherwise slim margin business, while also having the chance to attract new customers from the Spacious members who frequent their business. Customers, who may have otherwise worked from coffee shops, liked the arrangement because it was more affordable than WeWork. Some may have also liked that there was a hard stop to their workday, as the restaurant would have to open for business.
The Spacious team and its lineup of work spaces will now come to WeWork, the company says.
“Spacious’s team and real estate and operational expertise will help enable WeWork to continue to give our members access to the work space they want, when they need it,” said WeWork chief product officer Chris Hill. “We’re thrilled to welcome Spacious to WeWork,” in a statement.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Spacious had raised just over $9 million, according to data from Crunchbase, from investors including Baseline Ventures, Redpoint, Lerer Hippeau, August Capital, MetaProp NYC and BoxGroup.
The full announcement from Spacious CEO Preston Pesek is below.
It’s our great pleasure to announce to the Spacious community the exciting news that we are joining the WeWork family.
Since our inception, Spacious has explored new ways of activating and re-programming the physical built environment, in direct response to the technological changes that are revolutionizing how we interact with spaces, buildings, and cities.
In WeWork, we have found much natural alignment across our visions for the integration of work, technology, and physical space. We’re thrilled for the opportunity to continue to serve our members at Spacious today as part of the greater WeWork community.
Spacious’s service delivers a distributed network of walk-in, on-demand workspaces, wrapped in an experience of stylish hospitality. By joining WeWork, we’re taking the next step in providing easy access to on-demand workspaces across the world.
I would like to extend a big thanks to everyone who has joined us on this journey of building Spacious. From our team of amazing employees, to our loyal and enthusiastic customers, to our pioneering space and real estate partners, and to our intrepid investors, thank you. I hope you will join me in celebrating this exciting new opportunity with WeWork.
Sincerely yours,
Preston Pesek
CEO of Spacious